Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Chocolate Baroque challenge blog. This week we are announcing the winners of the last challenge, which is one of our favourite parts of the month!

The Winner of our £15 prize to spend at Chocolate Baroque is Barbara, her fabulously elegant card was drawn randomly by Random.Org as the overall
winner. Congratulations Barbara, we hope that you will enjoy your prize.

You can also display our Winners badge, details of how to obtain the badge can be found on the FAQ tab at the top of the page. Please email Lesley on lesley@chocolatebaroque.com with your details so that she can organise your voucher.

Our Top Three has been chosen by the Design Team and we had a really hard
time making our selections from all your fabulous entries. So in no particular order here they are:

Congratulations to you all, you can display the Top Three badge on your blog.
Details of how to obtain the badge made be found on the FAQ tab at the
top of the page. Well done to everyone who entered, I have to say we are bowled over by the standard of entries. I hope you are enjoying our challenges as much as we are in seeing all your wonderful designs and that you
will enter our current challenge, details of which you can find here

We have some more inspiration from our Design Team for you this week. Our first project is from Maria:

We will back next week with more projects from the Design Team so,
until then, we look forward to seeing more of your crafty creations. If
you have any questions and you cannot find the answers on the blog,
please send us a private message using the contact form located at the
very end of this blog post; you will see it after the comments section.

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new challenge on the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. A big 'Thank you' for all of your entries into last month's challenge, and for your lovely comments, we really appreciate your support. The winner and Top Three will be announced next week, both on here on and on our Facebook page, so keep watching - you never know it could be you.

Just as a reminder to those of you who have visited before, and for anyone who is
new to the blog, our challenges are monthly, based on an inspirational
photo and a colour swatch. A new challenge is launched on the third
Wednesday of every month and you can use any medium
to create your projects; paints, inks, pencils, pens etc as long as you
keep to the colours from the colour swatch in your project.

We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque
stamps to one lucky winner, who will be selected by Random.org
from all the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps in their
projects. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps, but they will
not be eligible to win the monthly prize. All entrants will have a
chance to be selected as one of our Top Three and can then display our
'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blog.

We've had several people ask if Elusive Images stamps, or retired Chocolate Baroque stamps that are no longer available on the website, may be used in our challenges. The whole idea of this challenge blog is for you to have fun and be creative with your stash and we welcome all entries. We really love seeing all the wonderful examples you design and it's exciting to see how creative you all are. However, to be in with a chance of winning our monthly prize your entry must feature Chocolate Baroque stamps that are currently available on our website. I hope this clears things up for those of you who have been a little unsure about what to use.

Now on to this month's challenge which has been inspired by an original piece of artwork created by Lesley

The challenge will close at 12.00 p.m. on Tuesday 14th October 2014
and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 22ndth October 2014.

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Hello everyone, goodness, it's week four of our second challenge already. The time is just flying by between our weekly posts. Thank you for your continued support, it has been great to see the fabulous entries coming in. Welcome to our new followers, it is lovely to see you here.

There is still plenty of time to enter the challenge, and if you would like to add your project, you can find the link in this post

The colour swatch, as a reminder, uses an original piece of artwork created by our DT member Doreen:

You can use any medium
to create your projects; paints, inks, pencils, pens, as long as you
keep to the colours from the colour swatch in your project.

We are offering a monthly prize of £15 to spend on Chocolate Baroque
stamps to a lucky winner. The winner will be selected by Random.org
from all the entrants who have used Chocolate Baroque stamps in their
projects. We welcome entries incorporating other stamps, but they will
not be eligible to win the monthly prize. All entrants will have a
chance to be selected as one of our Top Three and can then display our
'I made the Top Three at Chocolate Baroque' badge on their blog.

This week, we are looking at some of your entries into the challenge. Firstly, we have a lovely card from Rachel using some clever masking and a great balance of the colours:

Sandra has used Distress Inks to create a watery background, and added some textured elements to tie in with her stamped details:

Penny's mixed media piece is so detailed, and contains some really clever handmade elements. Her blog post is well worth a read.

Finally, an elegant card from Barbara, using the colours in a softer palette:

All of the projects are so different and yet they stick to the colours of the challenge.

Now we have two free downloads for you this month! Lesley, has very kindly designed two papers especially for you to use for your personal enjoyment. They actually tie in with the colours of the challenge this month, and could be used for your entries if you wish. We hope that you will use them to create something crafty. Please do not pass them on to others, but send them back here
to collect the freebies for themselves.

To obtain your free downloads please click on the images below. Once you
have the enlarged the images on your screen, right click on the images, choose
the option 'Save As', and save the images to your computer. You can now
print the images onto a variety of surfaces for your crafting projects.

We
will be back next week with a new challenge, and hope to see lots more entries for the current challenge in
the meantime. Don't forget if you have any questions, and you can't
find the answers on the blog, please send us a private message using the
contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it
after the comments section.

To make the background, tear a piece of paper and lay over the card and colour the bottom with the Crushed Olive ink. With the second torn piece of paper, mask the grass. Cut or punch a circle for the moon and colour the sky with the Stormy Sky ink. Replace the first masks, and lightly spritz with water then blot with a paper towel to remove some of the ink.

When dry, stamp the small grass from the Honeysuckle Butterfly stamp plate with the Crushed Olive across the bottom. Stamp the sentiment on the bottom right corner.

Using a ruler, draw two crossing lines with the Micron black pen for the Owls to sit on.

Ink the owl stamps from the Snowy scenes stamp plate with the Memento Tuxedo Black ink, and colour with the Alcohol pens.

Cut out the owls. Place the larger owls on foam pads and glue the smaller owls to give a feeling of perspective.

Matt the scene with the brown card and fix to the base card.

We
will be back next week with another post, and hope to see lots more entries for the current challenge.

You can add your entries to the Inlinkz link here. In the meantime, don't forget if you have any questions, and you can't find the answers on the blog pages, please send us a private message using the
contact form located at the very end of this blog post; you will see it
after the comments section.

Current Challenge

Welcome

A very warm welcome to the Chocolate Baroque Challenge Blog. We love crafting and stamping in particular and we love to share and encourage you to have a go.

We hope that you will be inspired to get your stamps inked up, make some time to play and end up with a creation you are proud to share with us all.

Please take a look around - we have tabs at the top that give you lots of information about how our challenges work and if you have any questions at all, please use the Contact page to get in touch and one of the team will get back to you.